I'm guessing a fair amount of y'all have played the original Enemy Unknown when it came out or played with the old X-coms, well with the long war, it's more or less a perfect successor to the old ones. I felt that vanilla, while a great game, lacked a certain something, but my god, has long war delivered. Some things that have changed, though bear in mind I never played Enemy Within without LW, so some of the good stuff comes from that obviously:
-Higher squad size
-Much more varied equipment choices, kind of like old xcom without the silly inventory bullshit
-Different perk progression and classes, including a choice between 2 classes at first perk level
-More varied misson settings (some of this is the dlc, some is long war repurposing maps and start locations)
-More alien types compared to vanilla (that is enemy within)
-You can build badass mechs (also EW)
-Much better enemy AI (their patrol routes are much more agressive, so sometimes you pop multiple pods and things can really snowball)
-Aliens can get fucking scary as time goes by, let me illustrate this with one picture (I've had missions with 40+ aliens):
That is totally not made up, you can get shit popping up that makes you flat out rage, kind of like the old terror from the deep. You will lose people you have been training up, and you will avenge them with alien blood. Try not to savescum too often, as it can ruin some of the FUN.
So all in all, check this game out with the mod, but be prepared, it is unforgiving and a hueg time sink. I'm talking >150 hours in a single campaign time sink.
A couple of tips: the interceptor meta is even more unforgiving than most of the game, so you really do need to readjust to how it works (you dont need to shoot down everything, at start you can basically only down small ufos, not even mediums, there are different strength ufos even in same size, ect. ect.)
I would recommend you start with cinematic mode and red fog second wave options on.
